


On the nature of demon summoning

by LilithReisender



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: "cult" is used loosely in this instance, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley gets summoned by a cult, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Pre-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Pre-Relationship, aziraphale - Freeform, crowley - Freeform, good omens - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 02:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21948028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilithReisender/pseuds/LilithReisender
Summary: Crowley didn’t know where he was, why his magic wasn’t working, or why he had suddenly been pulled from his reign of terror upon houseplants to what looked (and smelled) like an old basement. The only thing he was certain of was that the self-proclaimed “cult” that was currently standing in front of him was just a bunch of teenagers in black robes.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 168





	On the nature of demon summoning

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to my darling Alex. My dear, I am so glad we met and started talking all those months ago. You are such an amazing person who deserves all the love and good things this world can give you. I hope this little fic gives you something to smile about for a little while.

Crowley didn’t know where he was, why his magic wasn’t working, or why he had suddenly been pulled from his reign of terror upon houseplants to what looked (and smelled) like an old basement. The only thing he was certain of was that the self-proclaimed “cult” that was currently standing in front of him was just a bunch of teenagers in black robes.

Said teenagers in black robes were currently staring at Crowley as if none of them had _actually_ expected him to show up.

“Would anyone mind telling me where the heaven I am?” Crowley glared at the group, trying to look intimidating, which was a difficult feat while wearing a black skin-tight dress and holding a plant mister, but Crowley managed.

Some of the members took a step back, but one of them removed their hood to reveal a young auburn-haired girl with a face covered in freckles who was gaping at him.

Yep, definitely teenagers.

“ _Well_ , this was a fun trip, but I should be headed back about now.” Crowley snapped his fingers, fully intending to go back to his plants, and was quite surprised to find that when he opened his eyes again a moment later, he was still in the basement.

_What. The. Fuck._

Crowley could feel his heartbeat increasing, anxiety beginning to fill his thoughts. Normally he could just miracle away his more “human” reactions to, well, anything. But that apparently wasn’t an option anymore. _Great._ Crowley tilted his head down, running his hand through his hair before opening his eyes again, noticing the paint on the floor beneath him.

Crowley was standing in the exact center of a white painted circle lined with black candles, inside the circle was a perfectly drawn white pentagram that had various “occult” symbols in between the crossing lines.

Crowley was in a summoning circle- and a bad one at that. There was absolutely _no_ reason this thing should have worked.

“Demon, former Angel of Heaven, servant of the Dark Lord,” The auburn-haired girl spoke shakily, “Um…we have summoned you here from the bowels of hell to, um, command you to grant us-”

“Wait, wait, wait, hold on,” Crowley held up one hand and the girl immediately stopped talking. “Are you sure you’ve got the right demon for this? I mean, _technically_ I could do- whatever it is you’re going to ask me to do, but it’s a bit below my pay grade. Shouldn’t you be looking for one of the more _minor_ demons?”

“We were- um, we were supposed to summon the Fallen Angel Gadreel, Serpent of Eden.” The girl spoke with surprising confidence as she clutched something tight to her chest.

“Well, you got it half right.” Crowley took off his glasses and stared pointedly at her. “Serpent of Eden here, definitely _not_ Gadreel. As far as I know, that sod is still Upstairs.”

They hadn’t even _meant_ to summon Crowley, so why had he been dragged from his flat to wherever the heaven he was? His answer was, quite literally, right underneath his feet. Crowley shifted one foot to reveal another perfectly drawn sigil, only this one he knew all too well: his own name.

Fuck.

“Where,” Crowley hissed, “did you find this?” He pointed at the sigil by his foot. In six thousand years he had never shown _that_ to anyone. Well, anyone other than Aziraphale, but that hardly counted. Besides, Aziraphale would never be so stupid as to give that information to humans. The auburn-haired girl held up a battered book, showing him the cover.

“The Grimoire of Belphegor” Crowley read aloud. The book may have looked old and battered from use, but it did not look like any _real_ grimoire Crowley had ever seen. It had a barcode on the back for Satan’s sake! But clearly it got at least one thing right, otherwise Crowley wouldn’t be in this mess. Besides, Belphegor was the button-pusher of Hell, he hardly ever did anything. Why would he have his own grimoire.

“All right, okay,” Crowley held his hands up in what he hoped was a placating gesture. “I get it, kids rebelling against parents and forced conformity and all that, believe me, I'm the expert on rebelling against authority. Just-”

“Shut up!” the auburn-haired girl ordered. Crowley opened his mouth to keep talking, but no sound came out. He blinked and tried again- still nothing. _Shit._ What the heaven had they done? There was literally no reason that this stupid circle should be working.

The auburn-haired girl who Crowley had decided was probably the leader was gaping at him again, and this time Crowley couldn’t blame her. If _he_ didn’t know what they had done to get him here, he doubted they did, and there was nothing more dangerous than someone who didn’t know how to use their own power.

The girl snapped her fingers, and each hood was pulled back to reveal young faces, each with their own expressions of shock.

“All right everyone,” the leader girl yelled, bringing them all to attention. “we all know what to do next.”

“Can you run that by me again?” a voice squeaked from behind Crowley. The leader girl rolled her eyes.

“First, we summon a demon.” She gestured at Crowley dramatically, “check. Next, we bind him to one of us, or to the group of us so we can share his power and get whatever it is we desire. Or we sell our souls to Hell to get a set amount of time living however the hell we want.” She turned to face Crowley. “Demon, you will give us what we request.” Crowley raised his eyebrows at her. “Oh, right. Um- you may speak.”

“Thank _Satan_!” Crowley exclaimed, “Haven’t had _that_ happen before.”

“You will give us what we request?” She said again, sounding far less sure of herself. Crowley hesitated. The thing was: deals with demons were tricky. They required lots of paperwork, and _literally_ every word either party said had to be meticulously transcribed, otherwise Dagon would bring Crowley downstairs until every single word was written and filed to their liking.

“Perhaps,” Crowley answered. Just specific enough that the girl would keep talking, but also vague enough that Dagon wouldn’t come calling quite yet.

“Okay, so… the book says that now that we have the demon’s agreement, next comes the physical part of the ritual to make sure he stays and won’t leave immediately.” Crowley froze, not quite sure where this was going.

“What _exactly_ do you plan on doing for that?” He asked.

“Uh…” the girl thumbed through the pages of the ratty book. “It says that the ritual varies based on the strength of the wish. We can write down our wishes and then burn them.”

“Only works with witches.” Crowley interrupted.

“Steal the demon’s power through another spell.”

“Wouldn’t recommend that, just be painful for everyone in the end.”

“Have sex with the demon to bind them to one of us.”

“ _Completely_ off the table.”

“Make a sacrifice to the demon so he will be indebted to you.”

“You know, I am feeling a bit peckish.” The entire group stiffened, staring at him uncomfortably. “I’m joking, relax a bit.” They kept staring at him. “Look, what is it that you guys even want? There’s no need for all this if you just want to make a deal. Just tell me what you’re thinking of and I’ll pop on down and send up whoever is available,” _probably Eric_ , Crowley thought, “and they’ll sort out all the paperwork.”

“We want-” the boy next to the leader girl started

“Shut up!” the leader girl yelled, covering the boy’s mouth with her hand. “It’s a trick. The book says he will say anything to get us to let him go.” _Fair enough_ , Crowley shrugged. “We can’t let him go until we make a deal of some kind or like, sign a contract or something to make sure he’ll come back and won’t harm any of us.” Crowley rolled his eyes.

“You remind me a bit of my supervisor. They’re a stickler for paperwork.” Dagon would probably love to get their hands on this girl. They’d probably make her their apprentice. Crowley rubbed at the sigil by his foot, hoping that _maybe_ it would smear and Crowley could leave. This was getting ridiculous. If he didn’t get back to his flat soon, the plants were going to think that their behavior was allowed and would begin to slack off. That was unacceptable. Unfortunately, the sigil did not so much as smudge.

"That won't work you know," The auburn-haired girl said, "You can't do any damage to the sigils as long as you're inside the circle. As soon as you promise to give us what we want, we'll let you go."

“Why are you guys even doing this? What’s the point? You all keep talking about wanting me to do things for you, but you wont even tell me what it is. All you keep-” Crowley stopped mid-sentence as it hit him: they didn’t have _any_ idea what they were doing. They probably hadn’t even thought this would work. That meant Crowley was at the whim of six teenagers who seemed to be changing their mind about him very quickly.

"Vee? Maybe we should just let this whole thing go?" A nervous voice said from behind him. Crowley turned around and pointed at the boy who had just spoken.

"At least one of you has _some_ sense." Crowley said scathingly.

"No," the girl- Vee, he supposed, glared at him. "you aren't leaving until you do as we ask."

"Look, you haven't even _told_ me what you want in the first place, makes it pretty hard to do. And you do know these things go both ways right? It's a _deal,_ you've got to give something up as well."

"The deal is: you give us what we want. We let you go and don't decide to just leave you here."

Crowley paused for a moment, and then nodded in agreement. It wasn't like he had any other options at the moment.

"Good, now that we're all in agreement, we can get going."

"Do you know how this works even?" Crowley stalled. He didn't even know the technicalities of summonings like this but he certainly hoped that they couldn't tell. He needed to give himself some time to think of a way to get out of this. Vee's confident stare faltered.

"Its different for groups. You see, I can either take a bit of soul from each of you and then give you what you want individually, or I can take one person's soul and apply their desire to everyone." Crowley was making this up as he went along, but it seemed to be working, as they seemed to be feeling more and more uncertain about this.

"So, you either take one person's soul or everyone's?" Vee asked, gripping the spine of her book. Crowley nodded again.

"Take mine. I was the one who wanted this in the first place." She sounded confident about this, as if she had thought about it before.

"Now, don't turn yourself into a martyr. Who knows what your little cult will think of you after all this is done? Forcing what you want most in the world on them? They might hate you forever." The girl flinched at his words, it appeared that Crowley had struck a nerve.

"Look, you guys are kids, we're allowed to let you off easy on this." Not true, but Crowley hadn't made any promises yet, so he was in the clear for now. "Just let me go and we can forget that all this happened and we can go back to living our lives."

"No. We're doing this. So _you_ can stop fucking stalling and listen to me." The girl snapped.

"I don't like this Vee. This isn't a joke anymore, this is _real._ "

"This has never been a joke!" Vee began to yell at the people around Crowley while he took a minute to think. He had to get out of here, and soon. But the question was how. He had no powers, he couldn't do anything to the stupid bloody paint on the floor, he doubted he could knock out the girl and get the rest of the group to let him go. He had no way of contacting Hell, it wasn't like he could pray to Dagon without becoming the laughingstock of the nine circles. Besides, the circle seemed to be cutting off any contact he had with Below, so there really was no way that he could-

Wait.

The circle was cutting off contact with Below, but technically Crowley could still contact Above. He supposed that the people who had designed the thing hadn't considered that the demon they were trapping might have an angel friend who they could call on. Crowley had certainly done his best to _not_ pray to Aziraphale over the past six thousand years, he wasn't even sure if a prayer from a demon would go through properly or if it would get stuck in some sort of eternal prayer limbo. But it was the only chance he had of getting out of this without either a fight or a load of paperwork to deal with.

 _"Aziraphale, I don't know if you can hear this, but... I'm trapped. I got summoned, couldn't do anything about it and now I can't get out, did everything I could, but nothing seems to be working. I can't believe I'm asking you this, it's utterly ridiculous, and don't you_ dare _tell a soul about this, but I need you to come find me."_

Vee had turned back to him, her face as red as her hair. "Everyone, shut up!" She yelled. The group went silent. "Since you all thought this was a fucking _joke_ , I think that you should deal with this. There is a literal fucking demon in front of us, and since none of you want to actually make a deal, which is the thing we've been working towards for _months_ , you should all get to figure out what to do with him!" Vee threw her hood up and stormed off, throwing her book on the ground. The kids stared at Crowley, obviously unsure of what to do next.

 _"Any time now angel."_ Crowley thought as they all scrambled to grab the book on the floor.

"We could kill him." One of the voices peeped up over all the chaos. "Think about it, he's a demon, not a person, and he can't do anything to us right now. We'd technically be doing a _good_ thing if we killed him."

"You can't _kill_ me," Crowley protested, "There will be Dagon and their bloody paperwork to deal with."

"Think about it," the kid continued, ignoring Crowley. "I mean, look in the book, it's not even all that hard to kill him, all we need is some holy water, and I'm pretty sure Vee still has some."

Crowley froze. Bless it, they were serious. _"Aziraphale!"_ Crowley thought desperately, _"Running out of time here. I have no bloody idea what's about to happen, but I certainly don't want to be here long enough to find-_ "

There was a flash that illuminated the room with unnatural white light. Crowley looked up to see Aziraphale, somehow in both his human and angelic form at once. On one plain was Aziraphale in his outdated waistcoat and trousers, his wings outstretched. On another plain entirely was a Principality at full power, three heads and four wings, eyes dotting every bit of his body. Crowley distantly heard the thud of the kids around him passing out, and then the light receded, the only glowing light coming from Aziraphale's eyes. He waved his hand and the circle around Crowley disappeared. Crowley was hit with a rush of energy as his powers came back to him in full force.

 _"Did they hurt you."_ Aziraphale spoke with a dozen different voices as he glared at the crumpled figures on the floor.

"No, no. They almost did, but they didn't get around to it quite yet." Crowley stepped forward, placing his hands on Aziraphale's shoulders. The angel looked at him, holy light still gleaming in his eyes. "Aziraphale, you can stop now. They're kids." Slowly, the light faded from Aziraphale's eyes as he stared at Crowley, his face softening.

"I'm glad you're alright, Crowley." Aziraphale said in his normal voice. Crowley's heart thudded in his chest at the way the angel was looking at him.

"Me too. I'd thank you, but-"

"Heaven can't find out that I rescued a demon anymore than Hell can't find out that you were saved by an angel." Aziraphale finished for him. They both knew how this went.

"But do tell me, how did you even get summoned? That hasn't happened to you before as far as I'm aware." Crowley pointed to the book that was cradled in one of the unconscious teen's arms.

"There is something in that bloody book that they used to get me. I have half a mind to burn it just to make sure they don't use it again." Aziraphale looked scandalized at the idea of it. "What would you propose we do with it then?" Crowley asked. Aziraphale picked up the book and cradled it in his hands, before it disappeared.

"There, now it's at the shop."

"Why, so someone can buy it?" Crowley said, half joking.

"So someone _can't_ buy it dear." Crowley laughed, shaking his head slightly.

"Now I don't know about you, but I've had one hell of an awful day, and I could certainly use a drink. My treat." Crowley offered.

"I believe I have the afternoon off," Aziraphale said primly. "I don't see why not. After all, according to Gabriel's books, I just wiped the memory of a demonic cult and made them reconsider their life choices."

"Well then, by all means, I think we deserve a night out."

"The Ritz?" Aziraphale suggested.

"Fine by me, but Aziraphale, one quick question."

"Yes."

"Where exactly are we?"

"Somewhere in the United States I believe." Ah, well that explained a lot. Crowley had gotten a commendation recently for the so-called "Satanic Panic" that was going around.

"Let's get out of here. Lead the way angel." Aziraphale smiled at him and walked towards a large green door on the far wall. Crowley waited until Aziraphale was out of ear-shot before whispering the softest, "Thank you," and following Aziraphale out of the basement where they would hopefully be on the next flight back to London.


End file.
